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Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

The longest drive from within Arkansas to an out of state abortion clinic is about five hours. There is no place to live without compromises. I'm in a state with free choice and the nearest to me is a three hour drive. My distance to access is greater than 90% of the population of Arkansas. I can understand not wanting to live there due to that policy on principle but not on practicality.

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And what if it's an emergency?

Some compromises are not worth making when it could kill you.

Note this law is actually working as designed - they want pro-choice people to leave their state so they can entrench their power there.

Here's the first sentence of the law:

  (a) A person shall not purposely perform or attempt to perform an abortion except to save the life of a pregnant woman in a medical emergency.

https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-5/subtitle-6/cha...

We get it: YOU ARE DISHONEST.

That shit means, in practice, that if you're in bad shape and will obviously need an abortion; the hospital will wait until you are nearly dead before they perform it.

It happens every day, and vile, dishonest, woman-hating pieces of shit like you lie lie lie to defend it.

Here is an example of the deaths that dishonest, woman hating, authoritarians like you promote:

https://www.propublica.org/article/nevaeh-crain-death-texas-...

I know you won’t care, because you’re a worthless monster. But just a reminder that you are, in fact, a horrible person who deserves a horrible life.

> The longest drive from within Arkansas to an out of state abortion clinic is about five hours.

Arkansas isn't so bad because I can drive 300 miles to a different state if I need medical care. Ok.

> There is no place to live without compromises.

Sure but calling an abortion ban a compromise is like calling a nuclear warhead a nonlethal weapon.

Do you fail to see the irony in comparing abortion to a weapon and not meaning the actual killing of the fetus? (Abortions to save the life of the mother are a very small percentage of abortions)

do you really think people are falling for this? especially on this forum?

You can get medical care there. You just can't end the life of a baby, unless the mother's life is in danger.

Words mean things, and the four-week fetus of a raped eleven-year-old is not a “baby”. Medical care to terminate that pregnancy and that fetus is literally medical care — and is illegal in Arkansas.

I haven't done a deep-dive on this subject, but it appears adolescents under 15 are 0.2% of US abortions according to the CDC.[1] So raped children needing medical interventions is some sub-fraction of 0.2%, which is less than 1,200 abortion across the entire country. It seems like such an extreme edge case that it is highly irrational to tar the adults of the entire state of Alabama as "garbage people" over these highly irregular scenarios.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/ss/ss7209a1.htm

And yet the elected leaders of Arkansas purposely rejected a bill that would have allowed these children -- excuse me, these edge cases -- to be allowed abortions if they were raped. They voted the bill down eighteen months ago.

This is who they are. https://www.ualrpublicradio.org/local-regional-news/2023-03-...

It's always fun to see how elected 'leaders' of this ilk (privately) change their tune when their mistress needs an abortion.

Or their daughter. Or when it's them.

There's a reason this twenty-four-year-old article is a classic: https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-...

I don't think it's genuine to make the argument that restricting rights is A-OK if the people who would be negatively affected are a small enough group. I'm assuming you couldn't articulate what the "cutoff" would be even if you wanted to, and if you could I doubt you could defend it.

I mean, why stop at 0.2 percent? Why not hurt even more people? Is 0.2 percent a magic number?

I am much more pro choice than you are if you are anywhere near the Overton Window. Every single state has laws that shock my conscience as much as the Arkansas abortion ban shocks yours. If you don't have to make such compromises I envy you.

> Arkansas isn't so bad because I can drive 300 miles to a different state if I need medical care

Would just add that Republican lawmakers are trying to ban you doing this:

https://www.law.georgetown.edu/gender-journal/in-print/volum...

For example, Idaho became the first state to outlaw “abortion trafficking,” which it defined as “recruiting, harboring or transporting” a pregnant minor to get an abortion or abortion medication without parental permission. Which is obviously a problem if your parent raped you.

You're being downvoted but this is correct. The entire concept of "state's rights" was always a facade when it comes to abortions. The end-goal is restricting choice as much as possible, and in every way you can. Virtually no republican's support people travelling to blue states for abortions due to this. The issue of abortion has been rife with dishonesty for as long as it's existed.

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